Monday, January 25, 2010

Over the past few weeks I have been working with a group of volunteers in what may be the single most amazing building I have ever had the privilege to visit. This is not a grand structure nor is it located in a place where you would expect to find mind boggling artwork. Our job at the house has been to gather a collection of wood carvings which has recently been donated to the Annapolis Heritage Society by the estate of the late Eugene "Bud" Hamm. While we went looking for carvings we found much more.

I am quite confident when I say that Bud Hamm was a man of infinite creativity. In addition to the hundreds of carvings which are now at the O'Dell House Museum, he published 21 volumes of poetry, and decorated the walls of his house with plaster murals. Oh yes, I should mention that he also built the house himself. Today I would like to share some of the plaster murals which adorn almost every wall in the house. While there is plenty to look at, the images in this post are only a sampling of what we found at the house.

As we begin to process the wood carvings, I know that they will become the topic of many future posts. We are also working on more biographical information for this largely unheralded artist. With this brief introduction I will let the images on the walls speak for themselves.